The DEI Delusion: How Race Obsession Reinforces Racism

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become the ideological centerpiece of modern institutions, dominating corporate hiring, university admissions, and even military recruitment. Its proponents claim it is about justice, about undoing the wrongs of the past, about creating a fairer society. But DEI does not fight racism—it institutionalizes it. By placing racial identity at the core of every policy and initiative, DEI ironically upholds the very system of division it claims to dismantle. The goal is not equality; it is power redistribution. The solution is not meritocracy; it is racial favoritism under the guise of justice.

To obsess over race is to be racist. DEI’s insistence on defining people first and foremost by skin color is a perverse inversion of the civil rights movement’s aspirations. Instead of judging individuals on their merit and character, DEI reinforces the belief that race determines privilege, oppression, and opportunity. This is the logic that justified segregation, yet now it is repackaged as progress. The modern champions of DEI have no interest in erasing racism—they seek only to flip the script, replacing old hierarchies with new ones, swapping one group’s perceived privilege for another’s enforced advantage.

Proponents argue that these policies are necessary to correct historical injustices, but this argument collapses under scrutiny. The sins of the past cannot be undone by punishing those who were not responsible. A system that doles out opportunities based on racial quotas is no different from one that denies them for the same reason. It is, at its core, racism reborn, clothed in the rhetoric of justice and inclusion.

Worse still, DEI does not create harmony but deepens resentment. When people are judged not by what they accomplish but by what demographic box they check, they lose their agency. The assumption that certain racial groups are inherently disadvantaged and others inherently privileged is an infantilizing worldview that strips individuals of their personal responsibility and capability. It tells one group they are perpetual victims, another that they must be punished for crimes they did not commit. This is not a recipe for social cohesion but for perpetual division.

The most insidious aspect of DEI is that it thrives in bureaucratic institutions, where it is enforced by HR departments and social policies with no democratic oversight. It is a power structure designed to self-perpetuate, entrenching racial consciousness in every sphere of public life. It fuels industries of consultants, diversity officers, and activists who have a vested interest in ensuring racial grievances never disappear—because their relevance, and their paychecks, depend on it.

The irony is that while DEI proponents claim to be fighting for equality, their entire framework depends on a worldview of oppression. The movement is not about erasing racial barriers but about enforcing them with a different set of beneficiaries. They do not seek a society where race is irrelevant but one where it dictates every aspect of opportunity, power, and influence.

Consider the case of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the United States. In an effort to increase diversity, the school changed its admissions process to eliminate merit-based testing, a move that disproportionately affected Asian-American students, who had long made up a majority of the student body. Rather than celebrating achievement, DEI policies punished success in the name of equity, reinforcing the idea that race—not effort or ability—should determine one’s educational opportunities.

The corporate world has been similarly infected. Coca-Cola faced backlash for an employee training program that encouraged workers to “be less white,” instructing employees to deconstruct their so-called inherent privilege. Such rhetoric, far from fostering inclusion, promotes division and reinforces the idea that one racial group must diminish itself for another to thrive. The absurdity of this ideology is laid bare when one considers the impossibility of applying such principles universally. Would a similar program instructing employees to “be less Black” or “be less Asian” ever be tolerated? The selective application of DEI’s principles reveals its true nature—not as a movement for equality, but as one that seeks to enshrine permanent racial consciousness.

Briefly stepping outside the American lens, one quickly sees that DEI’s racial framework falls apart. In much of Asia, race is not the primary social divider; hierarchy, class, and ethnicity are far more significant. In Africa, the notion of racial privilege makes little sense in societies where historical conflicts are rooted in tribal and regional divides rather than white versus non-white oppression. DEI assumes an American-style racial dynamic is universal, but it is a myopic perspective that fails to account for the realities of the rest of the world.

A just society does not divide people into categories and rank them based on past grievances. A just society does not correct injustice by creating new victims. If true equality is the goal, then race must cease to be a defining metric in public life. DEI is not the antidote to racism—it is its latest mutation, repackaged for an era desperate for virtue-signaling but allergic to truth. The real path forward is the one that DEI abandoned: treating people as individuals, not representatives of racial factions. Until we return to that fundamental principle, division will be the only thing that truly flourishes.